State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has introduced a new postpaid plan with a rental of Rs 299 in order to challenge the private telecom players. The new postpaid plan comes as rivals Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea Limited and Reliance Jio strengthen their own postpaid plans in the country.

The new Rs 299 postpaid from BSNL is only available for new customers and not for its existing subscribers. The new tariff plan from BSNL offers unlimited data and like the revised Rs 333 prepaid plan we wrote about yesterday. This plan also offers 80Kbps data speed after FUP of 31GB, which is higher than 60Kbps data speed previously supported by the service provider. It also offers unlimited voice calls and unlimited text messages during the rental period.

The disappointing aspect of this plan is that existing BSNL postpaid users cannot subscribe to this plan since this plan is meant for new customers. This plan can be seen as an attempt from BSNL to increase its postpaid user base and attract customers from rival operators.

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BSNL Rs 299 Postpaid Plan: Key benefits

With Rs 299 rental, BSNL‘s postpaid customers will get a total of 31GB data every month. Like other BSNL postpaid plans, the data benefit is unlimited and the speed will drop to 80Kbps after FUP limit. The plan also comes with unlimited voice calls to any network in service areas supported by BSNL, which means free calls won’t be available in Mumbai and Delhi circles.

Apart from data and voice calls, BSNL’s Rs 299 prepaid plan also offers 100 SMS per day during the rental period. This plan is priced at Rs 299 but customers will have to pay additional GST charges as part of the billing cycle. One of the missing features is that customers cannot carry forward unused data from the previous billing cycle to the next billing cycle.

Private telecom players such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea Limited allow their subscribers to carry unused data to next month. For instance, Airtel lets its customers carry forward as much as 500GB of data as part of its data rollover option.

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BSNL Rs 299 postpaid plan vs Vodafone RED 299 plan

BSNL’s Rs 299 postpaid plan rivals RED 299 plan from Vodafone, which is a basic plan in the service provider’s offering. It provides 20GB of data every month along with unlimited voice calling without any FUP limit and 100 SMS every month. While BSNL offers more data benefit, it lacks 4G support and Vodafone users can even rollover unused data to the next bill cycle.